How agile composable commerce enhances customer experiences

Highlights

You’ll learn how composable commerce enhances customer experiences through agile solutions.

• Agility in strategy: It allows businesses to adapt fast with modular solutions
• Personalized experiences: It enables you to deliver tailored, seamless interactions across all channels
• Scalability: You can add new tools and increase your capacity as your business grows

Take the steps towards customer experience excellence. Invest in a composable DXP to drive your e-commerce.

Today’s online shoppers expect personalized products and offers and seamless interactions between channels. So, while customers browse products on the web, they may then go to the app to add to the cart and complete the purchase.

Regular e-commerce platforms often lack the agility to offer that. This is where composable commerce comes in.

Retailers are opting for composable commerce because it allows them to select and integrate specific digital solutions, enabling them to create an agile and tailored platform.

What is composable commerce?

The term “composable” is an approach that allows you to combine modular blocks to create a customized solution. So, you select commerce solutions and combine them into a customer application to deliver specific business needs.

These modules, or packaged business capabilities (PBCs), are flexible, scalable and easier to customize than regular monolithic suites. Each PBC is a third-party service and a feature of the application. For instance, you can have a PBC for search, payment, checkout, shopping cart, etc.

Features of composable commerce

Composable commerce is:

• Modular: You can add or replace each business solution with ease while the others continue to run
• Open: It is built using extensible APIs and models. That makes it easy to integrate and customize features
• API-first: APIs connect all systems in the platform to create seamless integrations
• Flexible: It empowers you to serve new customer segments, channels and markets

Why customer experience is central to modern businesses

Here is the truth. Customers are spoilt for choice. So, as Jerry Gregoire said, “Customer experience is the next competitive battleground.” In today’s digital world, your competitor is just a click away, and one bad experience is usually all it takes. Modern consumers want:

• Convenience, with seamless shopping across multiple channels.
• Tailored content is based on their behavior, preferences and purchasing history.
• Rapid responses to issues. For instance, slow-loading pages or outdated offerings are deal-breakers.

Businesses that deliver these experiences can retain their customers and turn them into brand advocates.

The costs of bad experiences

The statistics are clear. 53% of customers will quietly switch to a competitor after one bad experience without any complaints. Over one-half only need one bad experience to switch, and 73% would switch if they find a better customer experience elsewhere.

One unsatisfied customer can abandon their shopping cart, leave a negative review or churn, all of which impact a brand’s image and revenue. Composable commerce helps you manage these issues, enabling you to personalize interactions and ease the customer’s journey.

How composable commerce improves customer experiences

Composable commerce enables retail brands to design their tech stack entirely around their customer experience strategy. Here’s how:

Personalized interactions

The use of modular components and PBCs enables customization of every part of the customer journey. This is a plus because this McKinsey report states that 71% of buyers prefer personalized interactions.

Enhanced self-service options

Retailers can integrate PBCs that offer easy-to-navigate interfaces and intuitive tools. These solutions empower customers to find solutions independently, leading to better online-to-in-store experiences.

Enhanced product discovery 

It supports the use of AI-powered advanced search and filtering tools. These tools enable customers to find exactly what they need quickly, saving time and reducing mental effort for customers interacting with their platform.

Omnichannel consistency

Whether customers are searching for products on the web, checking out in-app or following up via email, they expect seamless interactions. Composable commerce supports headless commerce and API-driven design, enabling retailers to deliver unified and consistent brand experiences on all channels.

The role of frontend platforms

The digital customer journey happens on the front end, where the user interface is located. The front end also impacts site speed. Together, these factors affect customer experience. A seamless front-end experience enhances the overall customer experience. 

Start with a frontend tech that supports seamless integration, easy deployments and fully automated development cycles. This enables you to deliver the kind of experiences that customers desire.

Benefits of composable commerce for businesses

While the customer benefits are evident, composable commerce offers equally compelling advantages as follows:

Faster time-to-market

While legacy platforms struggle with long development cycles and limited flexibility, composable commerce offers agile solutions. Hence, it enables you to add features faster or test new channels without overhauling the system.

Lower total cost of ownership (TCO)

You only integrate commerce tools that serve specific business needs, ensuring you do not pay for irrelevant features. With its API-first approach, it is also easier and less expensive to update or replace modules.

Freedom from vendor lock-in

The thing with vendor lock-in is that you end up paying for tools and services that add no value to your business. Also, you cannot quickly pivot to new trends except the offering of the current vendor. Composable commerce enables you to break free from that.

Future-proofing

Composable commerce equips you with the right tool to adapt to new technologies in the e-commerce sector. It prepares you for future innovation and enables you to scale to new markets and customer segments.

Case studies

Wavin

Wavin needed to create a customer-focused web shop but lacked the technology to do so. Buoyed by the MACH approach, it partnered with Contentstack. The headless CMS powered its e-commerce, easing its customer's journey. This allowed Wavin to roll out to 36 countries and improve the ordering speed by 50%.

"We have been able to add technology into the existing relationships quite easily to improve the service delivered, as well as make Wavin more attractive in new markets." Stephanie Devine said.

Keep reading to see how Wavin built world-class e-commerce capabilities.

Mattel

Mattel wanted a CMS that would help it drive the user experience. It had to be flexible and scalable and able to handle high-volume flash sales without disruptions. 

Contentstack’s composable DXP unified Mattel’s digital experience across its three e-commerce platforms and managed its non-product-related content. These changes enabled them to go from weekly to daily flash sales while scaling to 20 markets.

Hall said. “Contentstack met the need as a place where content authors could go in, create content, and publish once to 15 different markets.”

Read more to see how Mattel enhanced its e-commerce with Contentstack for a dynamic customer experience.

Is composable commerce right for your business?

Going composable requires a shift in thinking, processes, architecture and technology. Hence, you must audit your business operations to find a suitable business case. Here are some questions to consider:

• Is personalized content essential to the success of your business?
• Can the business adapt to rapid changes in customer needs and market trends?
• Can you scale multiple integrations to deliver seamless experiences?
• Is omnichannel consistency essential to the sales and marketing strategy?
• Does your tech stack require extensive developer efforts to change?

If you answered yes to any of these, you may want to consider composable commerce. However, you need to prepare your team, research and decide on suitable technologies and review the financial costs.

Implementing a composable commerce approach

People have argued that the initial switch to composable commerce can be time-consuming. But here is the idea: the idea is to give you control, ensuring your business is agile, flexible and robust. Hence, you do not need to roll out all features in one fell swoop.

For instance, you can integrate a headless CMS to push personalized content. Then, you can add more payment options to improve the payments and checkout system.

How to get started

1. Evaluate business needs: This helps you understand your current tech stack, business needs and future goals. Involve all stakeholders in getting input on pain points, system gaps, and integration needs. This process helps you avoid costly mistakes and ensures that you address the technical and business challenges.
2. Choose the right composable platform: Evaluate vendors based on your business needs and future goals. Consider pricing, flexibility and technical support. Also, ensure that the platform has consistent uptime, proven scalability and prebuilt developer tools.
3. Create a phased plan: A phased approach allows you to deploy an iterative approach. Use pilot tests to control implementation and regularly gather feedback from these tests to enable you to identify issues early on and tweak your approach accordingly.
4. Train your team: Invest in relevant training, such as workshops, in-house learning, seminars, etc. Collaborate with the chosen composable commerce platform for extra support. Contentstack offers an AI accelerator and online courses via the Contentstack Academy.

Overcoming challenges of composable commerce

The switch to composable commerce can be a real struggle for teams lacking technical maturity. Here are common issues and tips to manage them. 

• Complexity: Integrating multiple PBCs can be complex as each one may have its API, dependencies, etc. Ensure that the team gets adequate training. Also, work with your platform vendor for technical support.
• Maintenance: When you integrate modules from multiple vendors, costs may go up and it may be difficult to maintain each one. Hence, opt for flexible pricing, automate updates and consider regular platform audits.

Future trends in composable commerce

Looking ahead, composable commerce will continue to evolve, driven by technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviors.

• AI-powered personalization: With the demand for tailored experiences, more businesses will deploy advanced algorithms to recommend products, tailor content and deliver dynamic pricing.
• Adoption of progressive web apps (PWAs): PWAs load faster and can be accessed offline. More brands will integrate them to deliver highly responsive customer experiences.
• Voice commerce: Composable commerce platforms will integrate with voice-enabled devices, making it easy for customers to shop using voice commands. 
• Augmented Reality (AR) shopping: More brands will also look to AR to offer more realistic and immersive product experiences. That way, customers can visualize products in real-world environments before they purchase. 

FAQ section

What are the primary benefits of composable commerce?

Composable commerce in DXP offers better personalization, lowers the cost of ownership, is flexible and allows you to deploy content faster. 

How does composable commerce improve the customer experience?

It allows brands to integrate the tools to personalize interactions, deliver omnichannel experiences and adapt to the changing needs of customers.

Why are agile solutions critical to e-commerce success?

Agile solutions enable businesses to respond quickly to new market trends and dynamic customer needs. It also enables them to scale operations without disrupting the customer experience.

How is composable commerce different from traditional platforms?

A traditional platform locks you into a rigid structure that stifles innovation, while composable commerce in DXP is modular and flexible, enabling you to tailor your e-commerce platform to the needs of its users and your customers.

Learn more

Composable commerce in DXPs empowers businesses to deliver agile and customer-focused solutions. This is even more critical as customers continue to demand personalized experiences.

With features like headless commerce, seamless omnichannel integration and API-first platforms, businesses can adapt to evolving customer demands while optimizing ROI. From reducing time-to-market to crafting unique, scalable commerce experiences, composable commerce champions ease of use and measurable outcomes. 

Contentstack’s composable DXP offers the ideal solution to kickstart your composable commerce strategy. It is MACH-enabled and offers a headless CMS, front-end framework and personalization solution, giving you all the tools you need to deliver the best customer experience for your customers. Talk to us today to learn more.